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Molly Millions
Molly Millions (also known as Sally Shears) is a recurring character in stories and novels written by William Gibson, particularly his Sprawl trilogy. She first appeared in Johnny Mnemonic, to which she makes an oblique reference in Neuromancer (where she is mostly referred to as "Molly" with no last name given). Her most recent literary appearance was under the name "Sally Shears" in the book Mona Lisa Overdrive. Description A thin girl, dark hair cut in a rough shag. Polished burgundy nails against white, slender, tapered fingers. She wore black leather, open over a T-shirt slashed diagonally with stripes of red and black; leather jeans the colour of dried blood. Occasionally she wore a huge pair of black plastic sunglasses that completely covered her insets. Appearance Molly is described as a lean, athletic, attractive, tall woman with pale skin and small breasts. Her body is spare, neat, and muscular like a dancer's. Her hair is dark, cut in a "rough shag"; in "Mona Lisa Overdrive," her hair is short enough for her to be mistaken for a man. The fingernails that house her retractable blades are implied to be fake, and are usually burgundy in color; on one occasion they were "mother of pearl" (in "Mona Lisa Overdrive"). Her clothing tends to consist of some combination of leather, jeans, jackets, and boots. She sometimes wears leather jeans "the color of dried blood." In 'Neuromancer" she wears tight black glove leather jeans, a bulky black jacket of a light-absorbing matte fabric; beneath it, a bulletproof sleeveless gray pullover with plain steel zips across each shoulder. A black nylon shoulder rig hangs beneath her arm sports a fletcher gun. And red, steel-toed cowboy boots with lacquered heels. In "Mona Lisa Overdrive" her clothing is considered noticeably expensive, featuring a jacket with a sheepskin collar. Sometimes she wears glasses in order to hide her inlaid lenses. Augmentations She had body modifications in Chiba City: ;Lenses: two silver mirrored lenses of low-temp isotropic carbon inlaid surgically, rising smoothly from her high cheekbones, sealing her eyes in their sockets; at first glance they resemble mirror glasses. The lenses are probably vision-enhancing; but don't seem to cut down the sunlight (Case wondered if the built-in amps compensated automatically). She never lets others touch the lenses as it would leave messy fingerprints. ;Micro channel image-amps: They allow her to see in the dark. ;Clawss: Her nails are artificial. Beneath them there are 10 narrow, pale blue steel scalpels 4 cm in length. They are double-edged razor-sharp blades that snick straight out from her fingers. ;Clock: A clock readout with blue characters is chipped into her optic nerve, low in her left peripheral field. The Finn detected that the clock was a silicon coat of pyrolitic carbons in her head, and saw it fist time so probably she had it installed shortly before Neuromancer. Case thought it was just a showoff. To accommodate the inset lenses her tear ducts have been re-routed to her mouth; consequentially, on the very rare occasions Molly cries, she spits out or swallows the tears instead. Her sensory input, metabolism and reflexes are also artificially heightened by means of electronic implants and exotic forms of advanced surgeries and other medical procedures. Molly is armed with a fletcher gun, which shoots darts of various properties, eg. explosive or cancer-inducing Bio Molly seems to be much traveller with many connections and friends. She knows a bar on a Damrak thoroughfare in Amsterdam, several bars and places in the Sprawl, is an old friend of the Finn and Bobby Quine, is well known by Dog and the Lo-Teks, as well as Larry and the Panther Moderns. Johnny Mnemonic She was in the Drome when she approached the table of Ralfi Face. She noticed that they aren't lively and offered them good "free base" (cocaine) 8k for 1g. She sat before they could stop her, annoying Ralfi, and his bodyguard Lewis attempted to slap her out of the chair. With a movement of her hand, she cut his wrist tendons and he left bleeding. She took a control unit from him and noticed that Johnny stands frozen and silent; Ralfi offered her 250k to give it to him and leave. Molly instead was in look for a job, especially now that his bodyguard was incapacitated. She and switched the control, releasing Johnny, who immediately offered her 2 million to hire her to which Ralfi for some reason didn't respond. She commented that his shotgun in the gym bag is "crude". They moved out taking Ralfi with them. She talked with the Magnetic Dog Sisters while Johnny ushered Ralfi through the door. They witnesed how an assassin cut Ralfi to pieces, and Johnny attemted to shoot him, and missed. They crouched in the narrow gap between a surgical boutique and an antique shop. Sheedged one mirrored eye around the corner and saw a single police Volks module in front of the Drome, red lights flashing. She explained that Johnny missed the assassin because he had enhanced reflexes. She was excited to face another professional. Molly suggested to hide in the Pit of Nighttown. As he explained the situation and technology implanted to his head, Molly thought bringing him to Jones a cyborg dolphin equipped with a Squid, living in the abandoned Funland. Through symbols, he made Johnny understand Ralfi's password, and Molly rewarded him. Together they came to the office of a broadcast pirate in order to blackmail Yakuza. Initially he was reluctant to upload data to a Yakuza Comsat, angling for more money but Molly persuaded him by severing a lapel from his jacket with her razors. Then she puzzlingly read the phrase that Johnny wrote for her: "Christian White and his Aryan Reggae Band" enabling him to recite the program. They black box transmitted the program to the Yakuza Comsat to make them stop pursuing them, while they a copy of the program was sent with 4-class surface mail to a storage space in Sydney. Neuromancer She is hired by Armitage to stalk on Case in Chiba and recruit him. In vain she tried to discover who backsher mysterious employer. In the meantime Case had heard that Wage wants him dead. He was leaving Julius Deane when he felt that someone was after him. While looking at a display window of a surgical boutique, he noticed her reflection: Dark hair and clothing, mirrored glasses, slender, and thinking that she is an assassin, he immediately ran away. After arming himself he asked Lonny Zone if any of Wage's Joeboys matched that description. Outside, he again felt his stalked behind him, so he ran to the arcade and Matsuga's former office, staging an ambush. Molly injured the Japanese security man, but shemessed with him with nunchucks. Case was overwhelmed with fear and jumped through the window. He saw only her head looking out, saying "shit", noticing that it is a woman from the northern Sprawl. Molly then went to the Cheap Hotel to wait for him. while there, Linda Lee came to take his Hitachi computer, and left nervously. When Case finally came, he found her sitting at the far end of the capsule, knees up, aiming him with a flechette pistol. She told him to close the hatch, and apparently she knew that he had rent a gun from a waiter, which he had already returned. She also asked why he pulled that scene at the arcade. She took Case to Chiba Hilton to meet Armitage. She sat cross legged on a silk futon fieldstripping the fletcher even without looking at it, while Armitage offered Case to fix his health probles and damage. She accompanied him to an unnamed clinic telling him how Armitage arranged for his cure pointing out that he doesn't know for whom really they are working for. Case woke up a few days later, on Wednesday, in his capsule with Molly beside him, she offered to massage him and then they made love. They went to Deane as he claimed that he wanted to finish some business before leaving and insisted that he must see him alone. She correctly guessed that he actually wanted information on Armitage, and reluctantly allowed him to talk to him for a minute. Later they went to Namban to pay his debt to Wage; Molly longed for one of the Joeboys to make a move and start a fight. At Chat she asked Ratz about fights and he directed them to Sammi's. During the fight, they witnessed the murder of Linda Lee. One of them told her that it would be cheaper to kill her than buying the RAM from her. She kiled the other assassin. In her dying moments Molly didn't allow Case to approach her. He told them that the assassins were friends of Deane, since the had abag of ginger candies. After a postoperative check they left Chiba with Deane ona hovercraft. They traveled to Europe on their way to the Sprawl. They stayed in the Old City section of the Amsterdam-Centrum and one time she went to the canal's edge to buy orange juice and eggs. One time when Armitage was off to business, she led Case to a bar she knew on a Damrak thoroughfare. Later he took him shopping in Paris. Once they reached the Sprawl, they stayed in a loft. She had a bag with neatly folded clothing and small gadgets (a tiny German stove, infrascan perimeter, screamers) and since Case always looked at shurikens, she bought him one. There Armitage provided them equipment for their job, and she noticed how Case stared at the Cyberspace VII. Outside they took a tube to Manhattan for breakfast and led him through bars and clubs, maintaining her conections with a nod, and taking care of business. Then she took him to Metro Holografix so that the Finn could examine them for implants. She talked with him about the season's fashions, about sports, about a political scandal in California... She briefed Case about the job Armitage wants from them, to steal Dixie Flatline's construct from the Sense/Net library and to contact Peter Riviera; but also discussed about his mysterious background. Molly proposed the Finn to Armitage for their tech, and he fit her for a SimStim broadcast rig for their job. Case first felt her sensorium when he went to Memory Lane in order to speak with Larry and hire the Panther Moderns for their plans. Larry surprised her when, thanks to his ultra-sensitive microsoft, sensed that she isn't "alone" and demanded case to disconnect. In the following days she was on reconnaissance trips with her rented cadre of Moderns, in order to infiltrate the Sense/Net Pyramid. Unknown to anyone else, she paid Larry to have the Moderns, with their weird lines of communication, to investigate on Armitage and who is running him. On the appointed night, when Case mapped the ICE of she was equipped with the simstim broadcast unit, a radio and scrambler stuck under a micro pore tape across her ribcage; the scrambler blurred her visuals for Case. Also she had a Moderns's chameleon suit stuck around her ankle and a throat mike camuflaged as an analgesic dermadisk. Disguised as a tourist with a huge pair of sunglasses to cover her insets, a pink plastic raincoat over a white mesh top and loose pants of a last year's Tokyo style and chewing a gum she entered the lobby of the Sense/Net Pyramid. Hands in pocket flexing to release tense. She strolled past the lobby and around midnight she entered an elevator. A guard inquired if she is an employee, and popping her gum she punched him and slammed his head against the elevator wall before he got the beeper on his belt. She put a derma on him to keep him under. She closed the door and stopped the elevator; she connected a black box from her pocket to the keyhole of the panel's security and went to the basement. Then she undressed and removed the chameleon suit from her ankle to wear it. She fights 3 guards, cutting out the eyes of one of them, but her left leg was broken, and Case screamed in agony when he flipped to her and he said to Brood to ask what happened. She used 3 dermas on her left wrist, over the veins, and asked for a medical team outside. She asked from Case to hold for 2 more minutes and limped towards a pair of gray steel doors. She followed Case's directions to the left, and ignored a librarian cowered between 2 lockers, crying and petrified. Case opened for her the door and gave her the serial number "0467839" of the black storage unit from the rack. She found her way to the elevator, removed the black box and returned to the lobby. As she removed the derm from the guard's neck, she ignored a woman who hurtled backward from the hysterical crowd and struck the rear wall of the elevator. She kicked away her diguise and covered her head with the chameleon suit and passed through the chaos; NYPD Tacticals and BAMA Rapids containing the horde of hysterical employees. She met two Moderns in the lobby and Tommy walked her out. Then she fainted. They took her to Gerald Chin's clinic in Baltimore and gave her a paper with grid coordinates and entry codes of an Armitage data base. Molly was cared by a medical team in Baltimore. She occupied the capsule assigned to dentist Gerald Chin. Case went to take her and ask about Wintermute but she silenced him with their private jive. After a lunch with crab (which she dissected with disturbing ease) they tubed back to New York, mostly silent. Back at Finn's, with silent signs and writing on paper they were led to the concusion that Wintermute, an A.I. of Teshier-Aspoole is behind their boss. After a discussion concerning Wintermute and Teshier-Ashpole, she said to Case that he "got a little side gig now" and gave him a paper with grid coordinates and entry codes of an Armitage data base for Case to crack; Case identified the coordinates as London. They followed Armitage to Istanbul and met the Finn at Istanbul Hilton. With a gesture she understood they were here for Riviera. Next morning Armitage woke them up and met Terzibashjian whom Molly soon despised him, specifically because of his turkish sexist views,threating him with her fletcher. That evening they went to the Spice Bazaar where she hid in the shadows near Ali's shop and waited for Riviera to exit. She framed him with a light beam, bt he tried to escape with an illusion nonetheless she shot him with a toxin-flechette, in the process amputating Terzi's finger. Later she cursed and scolded him for interfering. Later she instructed their Mercedes to go to Topkapi where they discussed about Terzi and Riviera's psychological profile. case told her that he did the London job and revealed Armitage's connection to Col. Willis Corto of Screaming Fist. She supposed that Wintermute took over his mind while in the French clinic. Then they went to Beyoglu for breakfast, she went to Fener to collect Riviera's things from his house, and stocked up his drugs from Ali. In the plane on their way to Paris, she was sitting First Class in the window seat with Case next to her. Riviera made a trick to Case, and she slapped him, threatening that he can hurt him really bad without damaging him. In the JAL shuttle to Freeside Molly asked Case if he ever left Earth before, hoping he won't get SAS. She explained its effects to him very different from airsickness. Character history In all three stories, Molly is a physically tough (but not instantly imposing) bodyguard/mercenary. She is referred to as a "razorgirl" throughout his stories and also as Steppin' Razor by the residents of Zion, a Rastafarian space station. A useful contact for dealing with gangs and black market elements, she tends to show little remorse for the opponents she ruthlessly dispatches in the course of her objectives. In fact she shows few deep emotions towards anyone outside of hatred, suspicion or amused contempt. Nevertheless, Molly is always regarded as a loyal, morally strong character, opposed to the progressing decay of human relations in the world Gibson depicts. An exception to her cold, somewhat cynic approach to life was Johnny, for whom she still mourned at the time of Neuromancer. This is part of the personal history she relates to its protagonist, Case, in addition to the revelation that she worked as a "meat puppet" (a prostitute) in a "puppet parlor" (a brothel where people loan out their bodies while maintained in a blanked-out state) to pay for her considerable cybernetic enhancements. Another pseudonym, used when she rents a hotel room in Neuromancer, is "Rose Kolodny", the name by which the Turing Police refer to her. The Turing Police may have simply gotten the name from the hotel's registry, but it is sometimes speculated to be her original name. The later trilogy books speculate that she is "SINless", having been an unrecorded birth and never having been issued a "Single Identity Number". This would give her the advantage of being more difficult to track in the cyberspace environment. Critic Larry McCaffery asserts that "Molly" is a "moll". Inspiration William Gibson has stated that he derived inspiration for the character from the image of Chrissie Hynde on the cover of the first Pretenders album.Twitter comment: "Key iconic for Molly was C. Hynde on first Pretenders album cover (...)"Twitter comment: "(...) Not so much CH per se, but this particular image." Relationships Though she is generally an antisocial personality, Molly maintains a network of allies and even a few friends, and is capable of empathizing with certain individuals who are implied to remind her of herself, or others she has known. After her love affair with Johnny Mnemonic ended in tragedy, she had a short affair with Case in "Neuromancer," later admitting that Case reminded her of her dead partner. In "Mona Lisa Overdrive" she acts as a bodyguard and mentor to Kumiko, the daughter of a Yakuza mob boss. In the same adventure she also seeks help from a friend named Tick, and is implied to empathise with the prostitute Mona (who no doubt reminded Molly of herself at a younger age). Perhaps her closest relationship is with the Finn, a fence who deals in stolen goods. She is more open and humorous with the Finn than anyone else, and seems to maintain her friendship with him for decades. It is likely that the Finn is the only person who could get away with calling Molly "Sweet Meat." After the Finn's death in "Mona Lisa Overdrive," Molly visits his construct, and appears more emotionally vulnerable than any other point in the series (excepting perhaps her confession to Case in "Neuromancer"). Molly and the Finn's construct converse for hours, while Kumiko observes a close relationship between the two. Molly never marries or has any children, and is never indicated to have any family. Portrayal in other media The 1994 film version of Johnny Mnemonic replaced Molly with a character named Jane who did not have modifications to her eyes or to her fingers. Jane did share the modified nervous system but used a single razor attached to the tip of a telescoping "car antenna" as a weapon. It is possible that this was due to the "Molly" character being attached to the rights for any possible future Neuromancer film adaptation. In the 2003 BBC Radio adaptation of Neuromancer, Molly was played by the English actress Nicola Walker. Actress Sasha Grey took on the role in Case, a six-hour dramatic contemporary adaptation of the novel staged in New York City in November 2009. References in pop culture *Molly is the subject of a song called "Mirrorshades," by the group Information Society.Comments: Mirrorshades *She appears in the unfinished "Neuromancer" graphic novel, released in 1989. Molly's role and dialogue are left largely unaltered from the novel, though artistic license is taken with her appeaernce. She is noticably more masculine looking, both in her body and her hairstyle. *Molly is often credited with setting the tone for the "razorgirl" character type in cyberpunk, with several other characters bearing resemblance to her in personality and appearence. Examples include Trinity from The Matrix franchise, and Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. *Though few official illustrations of the character exist, Molly is immensly popular among "Neuromancer" fan-artists on a number of websites, DeviantArt in particular. Indeed, a disproportionate amount of art related to "Neuromancer," or William Gibson's works in general, revolve around this character. Notes External links * Razor girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk Fiction * William Gibson aleph Fan site * Voidspace Online excerpts from Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive * MOLLY'S MIRRORSHADES; ZEISS-IKON EYES "I could never dream up a sufficiently convincing way to imagine them being attached." Category:Characters Category:Characters in the Sprawl trilogy Category:Characters in Neuromancer Category:Characters in Johnny Mnemonic Category:Cyborgs Category:Razorgirls Category:Characters in Mona Lisa Overdrive